There is a humanitarian crisis in a small corner of Europe and our eyes are blinded to it.
If we look beyond the headlines, we can see hundreds of desperate people simply trying to survive this grim winter. We can see young men in flip flops, thrown out of their flimsy tents in dawn raids by the police, beaten and attacked with rubber bullets and tear gas, left with nothing but what they are left standing in.
Cold, wet, hungry, and scared, they are the ignored. Yet their plight is of our making, the harshest of treatments that they receive are jointly funded by our own government. They are just a 35-minute train journey from our coastline, they are in Calais.
If they were dogs, the perpetrators of their mistreatment would be hauled before the courts, the press would be in an uproar, the great British public would be screaming for justice. As it is, we are deafened by the silence.
I came to Calais almost two weeks ago, to see for myself, the plight of the estimated one thousand refugees currently sleeping rough in the area. Volunteering with the charity for refugees, Care4Calais, I have been overwhelmed by the good grace of the refugees that they help, and I have been left in awe at their courage and resilience amidst the horror of their lives.
I have also cried myself to sleep as I have reflected on their individual stories and personal journeys that have brought them to these hellish hideaways of northern France.
There are no Camps in Northern France, that is the official line. The Jungle, which at its peak had a population of around 10,000, was destroyed in 2016. Evictions drove the refugees on, woodlands were chopped down, and mile upon mile of steel fencing and barbed wire now carve their way across the Normandy landscape. Many headed to Paris, Lille and Brussels, and new unofficial camps emerged.
In Calais, and along the coast to Dunkirk, hundreds of desperate refugees remain, and new ones continue to arrive, despite the extremely hostile response of the authorities.
At a site nicknamed BMX, due to its location beside a local bike park, there are around 180 Eritrean refugees. The first time I visited the site I was taken aback by the care with which the refugees looked after themselves, despite their dismal living conditions. We gave them food to cook, and provided them with the opportunity to charge their phones, their only means of contact with their families thousands of miles away. We brought a large speaker so they could play their music, gave them tea, coffee and biscuits, alongside clippers and scissors so they could cut their hair. As they trimmed away, played football and volleyball, enjoyed card games, Jenga, and Connect Four, I got to know something of their lives.
And all the time we watched by two extremely intimidating van-loads of the French national police, the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, the CRS.
The week before, at this particular site, there had been a particularly brutal raid by the CRS. They destroyed the refugees’ belongings, slashing tents, removing sleeping bags. They used several tear gas canisters and Defence Bullet Launchers, rubber bullets. One young man, running from the CRS and blinded by the gas, lurched into the road and was hit by a car. He died later in hospital. A second young man was hit in the face by a rubber bullet, he remains in hospital, his situation is serious.
In the shadow of the CRS I laughed with these resilient young men, as they revelled in the brief respite we could give them from the reality of their lives. These refugees, mainly young men escaping the brutal reality of conscription back in Eritrea, were remarkably respectful, polite and caring, inundating us with gratitude for the small help we could give. As we prepared to leave, I watched as they started to drift back to their small fires, lean-to tarpaulins, and leaky tents, their remaining shelter following the latest eviction by the CRS.
That night the temperature dropped, and I cried for the first time as I sat in my warm flat writing up my notes.
And as I have spent more time here, I have got to know more and more of the refugees. They have given me their stories, and I have little I can give in return – yet they have continued to show such humbling good grace and compassion towards me.
Yesterday, I was in Dunkirk, and it was grim. It had rained all night and a freezing wind came in from the Channel. I found myself talking to a British nurse volunteering with the First Aid charity, FAST, and I asked her what the most common issues were that she had to deal with. She told me that, “in Dunkirk, we deal with a lot of trench foot, they simply can’t get dry.”
As I stood in my many layers of warmth, and PPE, giving out biscuits to accompany comforting cups of tea, I was approached by Ali, a man who had no coat and was in a pair of long johns without any trousers. That morning there had been another eviction. The CRS, heavily armed and in large numbers drove through the site, pulling refugees from their tents. Ali awoke to the noise and managed to grab his boots on the way out of his tent, it was all he had left. His few belongings, the small tent and sleeping bag, a few items for cooking, and of course, his trousers, all taken or destroyed.
For all this, he retained his pride and showed incredible levels of gratitude for the little help we were able to give. He told me that he was simply grateful to have both of his shoes – in past evictions the CRS has taken single shoes from refugees, a particularly senseless and vindictive form of abuse.
This morning, as I helped distribute food parcels to refugees living under the bridges in the centre of Calais, I was shocked to find a group of six sleeping under an arch, amidst the wet and mud, in a space just 25 cm in height. It was safe from the CRS.
As we returned to our vehicles one of the other volunteers received a text from a refugee back in Dunkirk, the CRS had raided once again. There was nothing of Ali’s left to take.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs starts at the base level, with physiological requirements, food and shelter, and the next level being safety. The refugees aren’t just being denied these simple needs, they are actively having them taken from them, right here, on our doorstep.
The CRS are on the frontline. They have a policy of bringing officers in from across France and having them serve for just two weeks at a time. The thinking behind this strategy is that if their tours are any longer then they will start to humanise the refugees, to have some kind of empathy towards them. They are actively dehumanising them, and actively taking away their most basic needs.
And the UK is not innocent in this matter, in fact, it is at the heart of it all.
The UK takes just five per cent of the refugees seeking a safe haven in Europe, a quarter of the number that actually choose to stay in France. As the Home Secretary Priti Patel refers to refugees entering the country illegally, it must be noted that there are no so-called legal routes open to them. The UK has closed its doors and has even announced further increases in financial support for the security efforts of the French government, namely, the work of the CRS. With a closed door, the only routes into the UK are as stowaways on lorries, or the horrifyingly dangerous option of going by boat.
It doesn’t have to be like this though. We can pay homage to Maslow and address the two base layers of their needs. The UK can work with the French to spend our money ensuring that the people have safe places to stay, free from violence and the evictions that achieve nothing. And if we don’t want people to make risky crossings by boat, or to try stowing away in the back of lorries, then we can provide them with legal routes into the country. A basic initial assessment, on the French side of the channel, could identify those with genuine cases for seeking Asylum, destroying the opportunity for illegal trafficking in one fell swoop.
But the UK Government shows no intention to resolve these issues, and the Evictions continue. Just a few months back the CRS corralled refugees, before loading them on to buses, dressed only in the clothes that they happened to have on at the time. The buses headed south, into the night. The refugees had no idea where they were going. These are people fleeing some of the most dangerous places in the world, who have made their way here, to Calais, with the intention of making it to the welcoming arms of the UK. Disoriented and scared, they were bused all the way through France, to the Pyrenes, to be dumped on the border with Spain.
Some of them realised what was happening and on a couple of buses they pretended to fight amongst themselves, causing the bus to pull over, giving them a chance to escape.
One of the Volunteer Leaders at Care4Calais received a call telling him of their plight. He spent the rest of the night driving around a cold wet Normandy trying to find small groups of refugees to bring them to some kind of safety. When they got back to their tents there was nothing there, the CRS had taken everything.
If these were dogs being treated like this there would be uproar, on both sides of the channel.
And they are real people. Each one has their own story to tell, of why they left their home, their journey to France, and now the horrors of living on the UK’s doorstep.
There is Sai, 29, smart, funny, and, on the face of it, eternally optimistic. He left his home, his family, and everything he loved in Sudan seven years ago, fleeing conflict, targeted violence and almost certain death. His English is excellent, and he works hard as a volunteer helping other refugees. He has been in France for three years, and despite the numerous languages that he can speak, he doesn’t speak French. Like many other refugees, he sees learning French as an acceptance that he will have to remain in the country. He also sees it as the language of the CRS. When your dominating experience of a language is through aggression and violence it instils little love.
And my twenty-year-old friend Hari, from Afghanistan. He left his home and family when he had just turned 17. He couldn’t stay, it simply wasn’t safe. His English is good and he spends his time helping the refugee charities in the area. After three months of trying to get across the channel, he still retains hope. Hari has told me some of the stories of his journey to this point, experiences far beyond anything we can understand. He is no longer surprised by the acts of violence metered out by the CRS. Hari is just like my own sons, except they had the luck of being born in a country from which they didn’t need to flee.
Amjid is from Iraq, he is 43. He speaks excellent English and was a translator for US and UK forces. As a result of his work, he was forced to flee the country after his family was targeted by militants. He made it to the UK and managed to make a new life, getting married and even having a daughter. Not long after he separated from his wife the British government decided it was safe for him to go home, and he was sent back to Iraq. With his excellent English, he went back to working as an interpreter, only to be targeted once again. Majid worked with three other men, they are all dead now, two having died in his arms. Majid told me his story, in between apologising for keeping me from my job of pouring cups of tea and coffee. Majid had been sleeping in a leaky old tent in Calais for over four months, he knew that his only option was to go by boat, despite the letters he had from the UK and US forces testifying to his status as a refugee. As he spoke of the crossing, his voice started to break. Majid is a big man but he was scared. He also told me that he was extremely tired, he was embarrassed to say it, but life in Normandy was, “draining him.”
Ali stopped me as he was queuing for a blanket at one of our distributions, he was cold and wet. That morning he’d escaped the CRS when they undertook an Eviction, only for him to lose his jumper and coat, along with his sleeping bag and tent. He had made friends and would sleep in with them that night, but he was glad to get a blanket at least. He asked if I could get him a coat but we had none with us that day. He came back to find me later to thank me for the blanket, as well as the coffee I had served him. I cried for him that cold wet night.
Mo, a smart, proud young man from Kurdistan, talked to me of his favourite films, his encyclopaedic knowledge of cricket, and of his dreams for the future, working with his uncle in Nottingham. He also told me of his home, the targeted violence that driven him from his family, his hatred for the CRS, and his desire to live a normal life one day.
The personal stories keep coming. Every day there are more. I have filled one notebook and am well into the next. They are the human side, they are the counterpoint to the faceless dehumanising approach adopted by the CRS. They are the humanity which has driven my experiences here, brought smiles, triggered tears, and humbled me beyond anything I could have previously imagined.
And in a few days’ time, I will head home, to my wife and my dog. I will join her in putting up the Christmas decorations, maybe start wrapping some of the many presents we have bought for our children scattered across the globe, safe in the knowledge that they sit high on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We will light a fire, pour a glass of French wine and toast my safe return home, after two weeks apart.
And back in Northern France little will have changed. Further crossings will have been attempted, more brutal evictions implemented, and it will get colder, wetter, harder, simply to survive. And in cold damp tents, somewhere, will be Mo, Ali, Majid, Sai, and Hari, and all of the other people that shared their stories with me, as well as hundreds more just like them.
It will just carry on.
And I know that if they were dogs, we would all be outraged. What I have seen is inhumane, we should all be outraged.
A shorter version of this article was published on 23rd December 2020 in The Byline Times.
Photograph courtesy of Stephen F. Evans Photography
A recipient of a Coat for Calais. Knowing you’ll be just that little bit warmer makes such a difference.
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